Beiyuan's Longyun Center was a multi-story building occupying a well-situated position with excellent fengshui. The whole building was made up of over thirty floors, with a hotel above, a commercial area below, and a revolving restaurant stuck between them. When the light was just right, it would go through the clear glass floor-to-ceiling windows and paint a glittering rainbow on the buildings next to it.
Though right now, the sun hadn't risen yet.
The revolving restaurant wasn't a single unit. The four corners were divided into a self-service restaurant, a Western restaurant, a South-East Asian restaurant, and a restaurant that served modified home cooking—that was the one that put baby bok choy into its Buddha Jumps Over the Wall7.
Among them, the self-service restaurant in the south-east corner was the one that delivered 24-hour meal service to the hotel's guests and opened a breakfast room every morning at six.
At four in the morning, a few bustling young girls were already changing the flowers on the restaurant's dining tables to prepare for another day of welcoming guests. They'd just worked the night shift, when they'd been on call at all times, and were about to swap shifts at a quarter past four. Cleaning the bathrooms and arranging the dining room were their last tasks.
The service workers here were all ordinarily around twenty years old. Some had come from out of town to find work, and some were university students working part time. They were all young and fresh and at any rate could look pleasing to the eye once they were cleaned up. The shift leader was a girl with her hair in a ponytail; her hands were defter at changing flowers than anyone else's, not spilling a drop of water from the vases. When she'd changed them, she'd move them around a little into a suitable simple arrangement.
"Come quick, Weiwei-jie, the first round of dim sum is ready!"
The shift leader with the ponytail gave an affirmative, gave the dining hall a last close look, then followed the girls into the back kitchen.
The morning's first round of dim sum was often to warm up the kitchen implements. The cooks wanted to get a sense for the freshness of new ingredients and taste the new seasonings; the head cook would also sometimes take this opportunity to instruct the apprentices. Anything made during this time was an experiment and wouldn't be given to the guests to eat. Ordinarily it was a benefit for the night shift service workers; if they couldn't finish eating, they could take it away with them.
After being on shift all night, the girls's stomachs were rumbling with hunger. They followed the aroma, chirping, swarming around.
The shift leader called Weiwei wasn't in a rush. She waited for everyone to leave, then unhurriedly went over and used a one-time-use sanitary bag to gather up the remaining little pastries.
"Are you giving that to those losers again?" A girl looked at her as she fixed her makeup and curled her lip, saying, "Let me tell you, Weiwei-jie, it's easy for those bumpkins to flatter themselves when you're so nice to them. Also, are they worthy of eating this? They can't even tell imitation shark fin from the real stuff. They normally put any kind of pig slop or dog food into their mouths. Their tongues are pretty much there for decoration. To my way of thinking, they're only worthy of buying some buns filled with toilet paper on the street."
Weiwei smiled, not arguing with her.
The girls at a high-ranking restaurant were all trained in posture and etiquette, wore clean and tidy uniforms every day, and had to wear makeup to work. Among these surroundings, as time went on, they began to get the mistaken impression that they were also high-ranking people and rather looked down on the security guards downstairs, who were working the night shift along with them.
Weiwei was kind and well-intentioned. Whenever she worked the night shift, she'd take some of the dim sum she couldn't finish eating and on her way off work deliver it to the security guards. They were all people unable to sleep through the long night who could only take pity on each other. The other girls and the cooks had seen this all before. Maybe they thought she was silly; she didn't fawn on the guests but was always making friends with useless people.
Weiwei stuck her earbuds in her ears and quietly hummed along to the lively tune playing over them. Perhaps because she was about to get off work, her steps were a little brisk. She went downstairs by the employee passage, dividing up the wrapped-up dim sum among all the security guards on duty and on patrol. She went all the way from the revolving restaurant on the tenth floor to the surveillance center in the basement.
There were normally two people on duty in the surveillance center. One was a newly-hired boy, only eighteen or nineteen years old and dumpy. He shared his shift with a sly old bully who slept soundly in the break room next door, making the boy prop up his eyelids and watch the cameras himself.
Past four in the morning was when people were the most tired. Having a pretty girl come to visit was undoubtedly refreshing, but sadly the young security guard couldn't quite enjoy it.
Weiwei had brought a type of bun today with an especially strange flavor; apparently the filling contained some Thai spice. The young security guard didn't have the stomach to digest Thai plants; when he'd eaten two, his belly began to ache as though there was a storm inside it. He bore it for a while in front of the girl, but his belly only made an ever larger disturbance. He really couldn't hold back anymore. He made a pained expression. "Weiwei-jie, could you help me out? I…I have to go to the bathroom. The guy who works this shift with me is mad when he wakes up, I don't dare to wake him."
Weiwei agreed without argument. The young security guard sighed in relief and hastily ran off, holding up his pants.
Hearing the rash footsteps recede, the girl's dazzling smile gradually vanished. She somewhat nervously took a deep breath, counted twenty in her mind, focused, and took a very small specially designed flash drive out of her pocket. She turned her head and looked at the surveillance camera screens behind her.
"Around noon on the sixth of November," she recited internally. "The surveillance camera records from the revolving restaurant, the lobby downstairs, the front and back doors, and the parking garage, the more detailed the better."
There was an untold number of security cameras in the Longyun Center. She swiftly determined each camera's sequence number and quickly pulled up the records from November sixth for those cameras.
A wind blew down the corridor, lightly moving the door of the camera room, as though someone was passing. Weiwei turned her head to investigate twice, her palms breaking out in sweat. She nervously watched the progress bar; each second seemed to be endless.
Suddenly, a cough came from the break room next door!
Weiwei was scared into a shudder, instantly growing cold from head to foot, reflexively reaching out a hand and getting ready to pull out the flash drive. There was a rustling sound in the break room; the lazy security guard who was sleeping on the job had woken up. The progress bar was almost at the end. Weiwei clenched her teeth lightly. Someone shouted from the break room in a sleepy, blurred voice: "Xiao Meng? Xiao Meng?"
The camera room had insufficient heating; the people on duty usually had to wrap up in jackets and coats. But there was hot sweat at the corners of Weiwei's forehead.
The door of the break room creaked open. The man put a foot out.
"Xiao Meng went to the bathroom. It's me, Uncle Wang." In a moment of desperation, the girl suddenly spoke. In a very sweet voice, she said, "Since you guys have been working so hard, I brought you something to eat."
"Oh, Weiwei!" Warm from his bedding, the old security guard had wanted to come out wearing only his thermal underwear. As soon as he heard the girl's voice, he felt uncomfortable and hastily retreated to the break room to get dressed. Through the door, he said, "Ah, thank you. There aren't many young girls as nice as you now."
Weiwei, not turning a hair, lowered her head and let out a breath, her chest feeling unpleasantly choked. "I'm only offering you someone else's gifts, Uncle Wang. You're too polite."
When the old security guard had gotten dressed, fixed his appearance, and come out, he saw the girl idly leaning against the table playing on her phone. He hastily said, "That joker Xiao Meng. He's a disgrace. I'll give him a telling off when he gets back.—You should hurry home. It's nearly light out."
Weiwei smiled at him, pulled her jacket tightly around herself as though nothing were the matter, and, as the old security guard counseled her to be careful on her way, she gently squeezed the flash drive in her pocket.
Before daybreak, Beiyuan's Longyun Center's security camera footage had passed through a few people and ended up in Fei Du's hands.
"This is the security camera footage from some important locations in the Longyun Center Building from the day Wei Wenchuan invited his guests." Fei Du turned on a laptop and, without raising his eyelids, said to the circle of police officers watching him, "Don't worry, my people were absolutely unnoticed. This won't alert the enemy."
Tao Ran and Xiao Haiyang had been put up for the night in Luo Wenzhou's guest room and study. Because they didn't have experience, they hadn't locked the doors at night, and each had been stepped on a good number of times by Luo Yiguo, who knew how to open doors.
Tao Ran felt that he'd just fallen soundly asleep when he was startled awake by a mysterious knock on the door. He rubbed his haggard face and forced himself to concentrate, asking Fei Du, "Who was that who came to give you the stuff just now? What channels did you get the security camera footage through? Are they legal?"
"Some friends I helped out a little once." Fei Du opened a video and played it on fast-forward, casually dodging the question. After a while, he thought of something and couldn't resist looking up at Luo Wenzhou.
Luo Wenzhou hadn't made a sound. He had a cigarette in his mouth but hadn't lit it; he was only tasting it to satisfy his craving. He'd had his eyes focused on Fei Du the whole time, and his gaze bumped against Fei Du's when it floated over.
Fei Du paused, then gave the laptop to Xiao Haiyang. He took off his protective glasses and slowly wiped them a few times. "All right, actually, I…I imitated 'them.'—Do you remember He Zhongyi's mom Wang Xiujuan? She nearly jumped off the Trade Building, and later the building's boss took advantage of the commotion to stir up an Elderly Bereaved Villagers Foundation to show his sense of corporate social responsibility? That fund's daily operations were handed over to a specialized public welfare organization. Apart from Wang Xiujuan, it's also responsible for taking care of all kinds of other people who have lost their means of earning a living due to wicked acts.—The real backer behind that public welfare organization is me. I found people to hold onto the stock ownership for me. It's about the same line of thought as the Guangyao Fund."
Luo Wenzhou quietly asked, "Wicked acts?"
"The young man who just delivered these things, his parents died in a burglary committed by a gambling addict. The security camera records from the Longyun Center, a girl who works there thought of a way to get them. If I recall correctly, she's not local. She ran away from home because she couldn't take her step-father's molestation." Fei Du said, "Though it's rather profit-minded to say it, everyone may encounter unjust things, but if they have powerful material support behind them when it happens, whatever circumstances they end up in, they still won't be in too dire straits—thanks to Fei Chengyu's legacy."
Luo Wenzhou suddenly asked, "What does Wang Xiujuan do now?"
"She's mostly having her illness treated. She hasn't gone back to her hometown. When her health is good, she does hourly work for a cleaning company. The cleaning company has a long-term service agreement with Wei Zhanhong's headquarters." Fei Du explained what had become of this woman whom everyone had forgotten long ago without missing a beat. "I probably wouldn't have used her. She's too old, and she's not quick-witted enough. It would be easy for her to get into danger. I just had her occupy the position. When there was a need, I'd have found someone to take her place."
"She'd lost her son and had nothing to live on. She had no hope," Luo Wenzhou said slowly. "I asked you once what would happen to people like Wang Xiujuan—it seems that you've turned them into reserves for a vigilante police force."
If he hadn't forced him to come clean, what would he have used these people to do?
Where would he have gone with them in the end?
Imagining it slightly, Luo Wenzhou broke out in a cold sweat. Looking back the way he'd come, he simply didn't know how he'd crossed that tight-rope called Fei Du.
Fei Du avoided his gaze. He was completely absorbed in wiping his glasses; who knew how many hundreds of years of dust had accumulated on them. He wiped them endlessly.
Just then, Xiao Haiyang, with no sense of atmosphere, spoke: "Wait a minute. Look, guys, is that Lu Guosheng?"
His call knocked apart all the feelings floating in the air, forcing everyone's gazes to move to the security camera footage.
Xiao Haiyang hadn't noticed at all what the people next to him had been saying. He turned the screen excitedly—this was a recording from the revolving restaurant on the day Wei Wenchuan had invited his guest, from a camera at the door of that home cooking restaurant.
Around noon, Wei Wenchuan took a phone call as he walked out of the restaurant. He stood waiting at the door. After a moment, the elevator opened, and a man with his hat brim pulled very low walked out. His hands were stuck in his pockets. He looked all around, then indifferently nodded to Wei Wenchuan, who'd come up to receive him. He patted the teenage boy on the back and went into the restaurant with him.
The man's figure was tall and robust. He was wearing gloves. His posture as he walked was exactly the same as Lu Guosheng's when he'd been filmed that night at the Drum Tower.
Likely because he was well aware there were cameras around, even though he knew whose territory Longyun Center was, he still cautiously kept his head down. The camera couldn't catch his face head-on.
"Not having a face shot is nothing to worry about. We can get technicians to run comparisons on his height, weight, figure, and habitual movements. That can also be evidence that he's Lu Guosheng." As soon as he got excited, Xiao Haiyang's speech once again became quick. "Wei Wenchuan had contact with the murderer a long time ago, and he brought the murderer in on purpose to have a look at his target. They can't deny this. We can detain them!"
"Wait a minute." Luo Wenzhou held him down. "Don't rush. Leave this segment for now. We'll talk when we've caught Lu Guosheng alive. It won't be over if we only catch Wei Wenchuan."
There were "eyes" at the City Bureau. As soon as they alerted the enemy, Wei Zhanhong and his son were likely to end up becoming shields like Zheng Kaifeng; the critical point was to track those people down to their den.
Xiao Haiyang remembered the listening device in Tao Ran's bag. His expression was shaken. He didn't make a sound.
"Let's see which way he left."
Less than five minutes after Lu Guosheng followed Wei Wenchuan inside, he'd recognized his target and left. While the service workers weren't paying attention, he quickly went around the back to the employee passage, got a card out from somewhere, swiped open the door to the passage, and left.
The employee passage was different from the ordinary passages used by guests. It opened onto a small door at the back of the building. The girl who'd copied the recordings had done it thoroughly; she hadn't left out this door. Three minutes later, Lu Guosheng appeared in range of the camera at the back door. He pulled his hat brim even lower and also put on a face mask; he was nearly fully protected.
Suddenly, Lu Guosheng lifted his head and looked in the direction of the camera. He was thoughtful for a moment, then called someone. In a small intersection on the corner, a black sedan that had started to show its head backed up into the camera's blind spot.
Lu Guosheng strode over. Then the car flashed past the camera; the camera filmed an ordinary black Buick. There was no license plate.
The people who'd been watching the video, their attention fixed and their breath suspended, simultaneously breathed out.
Luo Wenzhou had chewed the cigarette until shreds of tobacco were coming out. Tao Ran rubbed at his face. "That joker Lu Guosheng is too careful."
"You can understand it." Fei Du still hadn't raised his head. "After hiding for fifteen years, a person would be forced into some overcautious paranoia."
"The question is, what do we do now?" Tao Ran frowned, thinking. "It's been nearly two months. Even if we canvas everyone in the area, the likelihood of finding a witness isn't high."
Luo Wenzhou frowned, chewing tobacco shreds. He was silent for a while. Then he suddenly asked, "Xiao Haiyang, what are you looking at?"
"Is this a high-definition camera?" Xiao Haiyang suddenly asked, pointing at a corner of the screen. "There's a convex reflector there."
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Author's note:
(7) 佛跳墙 - a highly non-vegetation dish supposed to tempt Buddhists out of their dietary restrictions.